Page 15 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

The memory of their last conversation rushed up, but Taylor pushed the guilt aside. “Don’t you put that on me,” she said. “I was a teenage girl. It wasn’t my job to fix your life. And anyway, you’re the one who ran away. I never told you to do that. So whatever you think about whose fault it might be that you weren’t here when your father died, the one thing you have to accept is that it had nothing to do with me.”

“I know it had nothing to do with you,” Kane snapped. “It still has nothing to do with you. That’s why I don’t understand how you’re justifying standing here questioning me about it. I don’t know what you’re doing in my house at all.”

“It’s not your house,” Taylor said.

“What the hell do you mean, it’s not my house? Of course it is.”

She sighed. No matter what she thought of Kane and of the way things had ended between him and his father, this wasn’t her decision to make and she knew it. The only thing she could do here was to try to deal with him honestly.

“Your father didn’t leave the house to you,” she said. “At least, he didn’t only leave it to you.”

She saw comprehension dawn on his face. His eyes went wide. “You’re not going to tell me he left the house to you?”

“Not entirely,” she said. “It seems like he decided to split ownership of it between the two of us. Fifty-fifty.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Maybe if you had been here and gotten to know him a little better, you’d understand his reasons for doing things,” Taylor said.

“Or you could just tell me.” Kane frowned. “You didn’t used to be like this.”

“Like what?”

“Mean,” Kane said. “You used to be one of the nicest people I knew. What happened to that Taylor?”

“I’m plenty nice when people deserve it.” She didn’t appreciate him coming back into town after all this time and calling her character into question. Who was he to say these things?

But then it occurred to her that she really wasn’t being very nice. Whatever she might think of Kane, she had to remember that he had just lost his father. He was going through something difficult and painful — even if it was his own fault that he hadn’t had a relationship with Jason for a decade. Even if it was his fault that Jason had died asking where his son was.

Taylor shut out that painful memory. It had been difficult to sit at Jason McCormick’s bedside and hold his hand while he died, but she was a nurse. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to do something like that, and she knew that it wouldn’t be the last. Maybe it had mattered more because she’d spent five years devoting care to Jason. It had been hard for her to see him go. He had been more than just a patient to her.

And though she hadn’t expected to be remembered in his will, when Thomas Greely had gotten in touch and let her know that she had been left a share of this house, she had been honored and grateful. It was a beautiful house, and Taylor had made the decision to move in right away. She’d known that Kane had been left a share of the house as well, but who could say where Kane was? No one had seen him in so long, and he might simply never show up at all. There was no point in waiting around to see whether or not he would, that was for certain.

So she had moved in.

And now, here Kane was, looking at her as if she had no business being here at all.

“Look,” she said. “Your father made the choice he made. He decided that the house was going to be split between the two of us. That’s not on me.”

“How can we split a house?” he asked. “You’re going to have to let me buy you out.”

“I’m not doing that,” Taylor said. “I love this house. I live here now. I’ve lived here for five years.”

“You haven’t lived here for five years,” he said, laughing.

“Maybe not technically, but in a sense… I was here every day, taking care of your father,” she said. “I slept in the spare room as often as I went home, because he needed to have someone with him overnight when he wasn’t well. And I gave up my apartment when I moved in for good. You can’t expect me to leave now just because you’ve decided to show your face again after all these years. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Then what? Are you going to buy me out?”

“I guess so,” Taylor said. “I mean, we’ll have to figure out a way to make that happen. It’s our only real option.”

“All right,” he agreed. “I’m not going to be difficult about it”

“You’ll have to give me some time to get the money,” she said. “I don’t have it on hand. And I suppose we’ll have to get the property appraised to make sure I’m paying you the right amount and everything.” Which meant they were going to have to spend a lot more time in proximity to one another, working out the details of the sale.

Why did that feel like a relief? It should have been something to dread — having to spend that much more time in his company. It was clear that he didn’t think particularly highly of her. He had expressed no gratitude whatsoever for the years she’d spent caring for his father, and his biggest impulse upon finding her here seemed to be a desire to get her out of the house.

And yet, there was something exciting about seeing him again after all these years. It was like winning a jackpot of some kind — full of possibility, surprising and thrilling. She didn’t know what to expect, but she wanted to spend more time with him and find out. She wanted to know what he had been doing all the time he had been away.

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